The charade, of course, is for plausible deniability. However, such deniability is becoming rather implausible.

Orion Henderson

I get 38,300 results. By comparison-the same query with Bush instead of Obama gets 22K.

rst1317

We were promised change. What we got was a Chicago-style W43. Spying on Germany's Chancellor does nothing but sully the US in the eyes of the world. And it was _at best_ occurring because the chief executive was too incompetent to understand that it was his job to set boundaries. At worst he knew and is simply lying to us. Either way any of the claimed repairing he did has been flushed down the toilet.

nehemiah

Empty suit.

oneteam

I despise Obama's ideology, but I have to say that our intelligence organizations (in which I worked while in the military), is charged with collecting data on all foreign entities. Yes, we have treaties that sometimes spells out the parameters under which we can collect data, but those have not stopped us in the past and they won't in the future. And you can best bet our allies are spying on us, too. (For which we have counter measures in place.)

Let's stick to the issues with Obama that matter... and there are soooo many of them.

Da

Yes. It is becoming increasingly difficult to be a friend of the USA on this side of the atlantic. It used to be that you could defend the USA saying they are doing it to protect us as well from terrorism. But spying on our governments?!

Back when chancellor Schröder first used anti-americanism to get ahead a little in the polls it used to be half and half pro and anti. You should read the comment section in conservative newspapers now, where people like me used to present your side of the argument. It's a rare voice who defends your administration.

And that is a bad thing. Once your brand is damaged all your products will suffer. Not only the spying, but also good things like free trade. You should see how our socialists spin it: "See. They spy. So let's forget about this capitalism thing!"

Also commenter "oneteam" said, your allies would spy on you too. Really? Do you think Latvia could pull that off? Do you think our pussy government in Germany would dare that, when they have to defend even the very existence of our intelligence agencies against left media? Spain, Italy, Greece? Come on... Maybe the English and they have that 'special relationship' anyway, so what?

KMO

Most parents break their children of the "I didn't know" habit by the age of three.

Ward Chartier

"Hope and Change" has become "Huh?"

marque2

It is like the old Match Game

Obama was so unaware
(How unaware was he!)
He was so unaware that he didn't know his administration was doing [blank]

So many people willing to fall on their swords for him. The buck stops somewhere well below him in the chain of command; it's always someone else's fault and he's clueless. Consider the CEO of a failing company saying they were completely unaware of the actions of their subordinates, had no clue what their various divisions were doing, and had absolutely no plan to fix the problems. How long would shareholders keep them as CEO?

Another_Brian

I think many of those that want to make rules that govern the rest of us have a tendency to assume their own weaknesses and failings apply to all of the people they govern. So you have city and state officials that can't stop drinking sugary drinks, so they create legislation restricting everyone's ability to buy large sodas. Or someone that can't quit smoking puts forward legislation that bans smoking in privately-owned businesses.

If we look at the ACA from that perspective, Obama is applying his own inability to accept responsibility for his decisions and applying it to the whole nation. Those people don't have enough information or somehow aren't responsible enough to manage their own health insurance, so they need a cadre of government functionaries to do it for them. In the same way, as an individual he's incapable of running the executive branch, so he has a cadre of government functionaries managing everything for him, and when mistakes are made, he's completely unaware and can't be held responsible.